Charles Foran is an award-winning journalist and the author of 10 books, including four previous novels. His biography Mordecai: The Life and Times won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Literary Nonfiction and the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award. Foran presents Planet Lolita. Told in the voice of a bi-racial girl and the language of social media, it is a riveting novel of desires and consequences in the unfolding digital age in Hong Kong.

Lee Henderson is the author of the award-winning short story collection The Broken Record Technique. He is a contributing editor to the arts magazines Border Crossings in Canada and Contemporary in the UK, and has published fiction and art criticism in numerous periodicals. His first novel, The Man Game, won the BC Book Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Henderson presents his latest novel, The Road Narrows as You Go, a bright, rollicking, unflinching portrait of the 1980s and of a young woman struggling to find her place.

Diane Schoemperlen has published several collections of short fiction and three novels. Her short story collection The Man of My Dreams was shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Book Award. In 2008, she received the Marian Engel Award from the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Schoemperlen presents By the Book: Stories and Pictures, a sequel to her Governor General’s Award-winning Forms of Devotion, in which she pieces together fragments from old encyclopedias in the form of verbal and visual collage, breathing new life into the old forgotten texts.

Kim Thúy has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner. Her debut novel, Ru, won the Governor General’s Award for French-Language Fiction, and the English edition was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Thúy presents Mãn, a mystery about a woman who, upon discovering that she is a natural chef, creates dishes that are suffused with memory and emotion.

Alissa York’s internationally acclaimed novels include Mercy, Effigy (shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize) and, most recently, Fauna (shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award). She is also the author of the short fiction collection Any Given Power, from which stories have won the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award. Her essays and articles have appeared in such periodicals as The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, Eighteen Bridges and Canadian House and Home. York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto with her husband, artist Clive Holden.

Julie Angus is a molecular biologist, adventurer, writer and photographer. She is the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean from mainland to mainland, and for her explorations she received National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year award. Angus has written for publications including The Globe and Mail, National Post and enRoute. She has authored three books and her photography has appeared in numerous magazines. Angus presents Olive Odyssey: Searching for the Secrets of the Fruit That Seduced the World, in which she travels the Mediterranean to unlock the secrets of this important fruit, resulting in a fascinating history and biography of the olive.

Kim Thúy has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner. Her debut novel, Ru, won the Governor General’s Award for French-Language Fiction, and the English edition was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Thúy presents Mãn, a mystery about a woman who, upon discovering that she is a natural chef, creates dishes that are suffused with memory and emotion.

Kathleen Winter's debut novel, Annabel, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the three biggest fiction prizes in Canada. It won the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Award and an Independent Literary Award, and was a 2014 Canada Reads selection. Her first story collection, boYs, also won numerous Canadian awards. At our Biblioasis anniversary event, she presents The Freedom in American Songs, her new story collection about modern loneliness, small-town gay teenagers, catastrophic love, inappropriate laughter and the holiness of ordinary life. At the Festival, Winter presents both the story collection and her first work of non-fiction, Boundless, which was recently shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. It is a powerful homage to the ever-evolving and magnetic power of the North.